


Exiles From A Chivalrous Society

by Desvenlafaxine



Series: Ninkyo Dantai [1]
Category: Persona 4, Persona 5
Genre: Gen, Yakuza
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2021-01-23
Updated: 2021-01-24
Packaged: 2021-03-15 05:27:03
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 4,878
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28933254
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Desvenlafaxine/pseuds/Desvenlafaxine
Summary: Amamiya Hiro has been many things throughout his life: common criminal, hitman, gangster, prisoner, husband.At the age of 42, he is none of those things. He is a simple man, now: owner of the Bar Janus, Inaba's one (and only) watering hole run by ex-convicts.This is how he intends to die: alone, content that if his atonement in this life is not enough, that he will be punished somehow for all the sins he has committed.Kurusu Takashi's arrival on a snowy evening changes everything.That isn't quite true. It's the boy he carries with him that does.[Snapshots of Amamiya Ren, growing up in a family not quite like anyone else's.]
Series: Ninkyo Dantai [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2122068
Comments: 1
Kudos: 18





	1. PEACE (I)

**PART ONE: PEACE**

* * *

**December 2nd, 2002**

**Bar Janus, Inaba**

* * *

The hardest decision Hiro was faced with today lay before him, spread out on the oak bar-top in neat little packages.

Menthol or plain.

He looked down at his arms; with his sleeves rolled up, a tapestry of violence, shame, and a lifetime of wrong decisions stared back at him. Hajime had offered to remove them years ago - some sort of crazy thing involving lasers, however the hell that worked - but he'd declined. Hiro's sins - and there were a lot of them - burdened his thoughts enough. The very thought that, one day, he might wake up, examine himself and have only a missing finger and a few surgical scars as proof of the mistakes he'd made - the mistake he'd been - made Hiro want to vomit.

Menthol or plain.

So here he was, standing behind the bar - his bar - staring at his tattoos, filled with a feeling he couldn't quite place. Fifteen, twenty years ago, it would have been knives on that counter, maybe even a pair of handguns. It had been picking which limb to break on a debtor, or which candidate to bribe. And he'd loved it, because the Hiro back then was, to put it plainly, a fucking idiot. Something like picking what sort of cigarette to smoke would have been a split-second decision, left to the reptile part of the brain that cared only about fucking and fighting, about pleasure and power.

Now, standing here, blessed with the gift of guilt and crushing weight of remorse, he was happy. He could smile, truly, knowing that today he only had to choose whether or not he wanted tonight's dose of cancer with or without the minty aftertaste. Yua and the rest of the demons working in Inaba's hospital might have called that line of thinking distorted or unhealthy-

"-ello? Boss? You there? You been staring at those smokes with that stupid-ass smile on your face for ages now." The source of the interruption - a bald, young man ten years his junior with a face that could charitably be described as a cracked slab of concrete - hurled an empty shot glass at him; Hiro caught it, rolled his eyes, and picked up the pack of menthols.

"It's called thinking, Yasuhiro." Hiro replied, grinning as he refilled the shot glass with another ounce of soju; in one deft motion, he slid the glass back to Yasuhiro and flicked the pack so that a cigarette popped into his mouth. "I know the concept remains hard to grasp for you, but I've heard it's actually pretty good for you."

Yasuhiro downed the shot, slammed the glass on the top and punched the dark-skinned, one-eyed half-Korean woman next to him with a hearty chuckle. "You hear that, Kyung? Bossman, thinking?"

"Riiiiight. As if. You're probably narrating to yourself like you're in some sort of hardboiled noir protagonist," Kyung grumbled as she sipped at her beer. "It was a dark, snowy night, and the only two thing harder than the two ex-cons at my bar was picking what kind of cigarette would grant me cancerous release from the bowels of my mind," she said in imitation of Hiro's own rasp.

"Fuck you. I don't sound like that," Hiro grumbled, lighting up his own smoke.

Kyung snorted. "Okay, so you don't deny you think like that. Come on, Boss, even back when we were swiping wallets in Oji your head was so far up your ass you could eat a meal twice before digesting it."

"I oughta kick you two outta here," Hiro replied with a smirk. "I let you two drink all my liquor, smoke all my cigs and take up the two best spots at the bar, and all you assholes do is make fun of me."

"Shop's closed, old-timer," Yasuhiro shot back, sliding the shot glass across the counter to Hiro once more. "Ah, not soju this time - shochu? And besides, someone's gotta keep you company before you die of loneliness. Speaking of, when're you gonna ask out that lady you're all sweet on, eh?" He paused, pat the breast pocket of his blazer and scowled. "Fuck, I'm out. Kyung, spare another?"

"Okay, I don't even - there's so much to unpack there. First off," Hiro groaned as Kyung passed Yasuhiro one of her own cigarettes, "whether we're closed or not doesn't change the fact that I gotta go out and buy more booze when it's gone. Second, what lady? Since when am I, ahem, 'sweet on' someone?"

Yasuhiro lit the cigarette Kyung had given him, inhaled, and coughed up a storm; he glared at the woman, who smiled back at him serenely. "Since when do you smoke this, this unfiltered shit?"

"I'm getting old, figured I'd change things up," Kyung answered with a shrug.

"Fuck you. Boss, gimme one of yours, and none of that minty bullshit," Yasuhiro spat, handing the cigarette back to Kyung. "Right. Okay, one, whatever, two, don't be dense. You and that lady - what's her name - hair's going grey like yours, definitely a real fox back in the day, works at that cloth shop down-"

"-Tatsumi? Ayane Tatsumi? No," Kyung gasped in what Hiro sincerely hoped (but also doubted) was mock horror. "Holy fuck, you're going out with the textile shop lady?"

Hiro sighed and rubbed at his eyes. "What? No! I'm not - shut up, Yasuhiro, or I'm cutting you off - I am not 'sweet' on anyone, and I for sure am not dating Ayane. I'm not dating anyone! I don't want to date anyone, you little shits."

"He's lyiiiiiing," Yasuhiro said, punching Kyung in the shoulder again. "Look, right, I've been doing restock with the boss for the past few weeks, y'know, since he's getting old and weak and can't carry a flat of beers to save his life these days-"

"-fuck you, you jumped up little weasel-"

"-and every time we walk by Tatsumi Textiles, ol' horndog here gets this look on his face, you know the one, back when fuckboy here was neck deep in every kind of ass imaginable-"

"-one more word outta you-"

"-and lemme tell you, he lays it on so fucking thick you could slice it up and grill it! _Hello, Miss Tatsumi, how're you doing this morning? Having any trouble with the kid? Can I do anything for you? Need me to babysit your little fella? Oooh, Miss Tatsumi, how about you bring your kid over one evening after we're closed and have a drink_?"

Hiro grabbed a whiskey tumbler, rifled through the bottles on the counter in search of something expensive, settled on a twenty-one year old Nikka and poured himself a very, very generous portion.

"-oh, please, I could never call you just Ayane - but if you insist, of course I can, anything to make you more comfortable-"

"-look, that's not cool, alright? Her husband died, what, two, three years ago? It's called being nice," Hiro growled. "I know how tough it is. Better than most. So I just offered to help."

"Hold on, I'm communing with my sister," Kyung said, closing her eyes. "Oh, I can hear her! She says, 'Hiro sure looks dumb when he's mopey. Tell my husband to go get laid!' Wow, that's good advice. Thanks, Min-Ji!"

Hiro downed half his whiskey, set down the tumbler and stared at the glass. "Don't push it," he managed after a moment. "It's - it's complicated, alright?"

"Iunno, seems pretty simple to me," Yasuhiro muttered. "Come on, boss, we're not trying to be assholes about it."

"Fuck off."

Yasuhiro sighed. "Seriously though, man, you've come so far. We all have. Dunno what Yua talks to you about, but I know she's probably brought it up. Deserving happiness, or some shit like that."

"That woman," Hiro grumbled, "is a psychic and a demon."

"So? She's a therapist. It's her job. We all - we all got our shit to work through, boss, yeah? We're all making a second go at things." Yasuhiro rolled up his sleeves and pointed at his own ink, then at Kyung's eyepatch and at Hiro. "That's old us. That's done. We're not doing that shit anymore. Yua said to me last month, I dunno, something like, we're allowed to be happy. To try again."

Hiro, in lieu of answering, tossed Yasuhiro the pack of Seven Stars, poured him a shot glass of shochu and slid it over to him.

For a long while, they sat, smoking and drinking in silence as Mariya Takeuchi crooned over the speakers about things Hiro wanted more than anything to not think about.

"Sorry," Yasuhiro said as the song ended. "Didn't…didn't mean to go all deep or anything."

Hiro closed his eyes. "It's fine. Don't apologize."

"What a sorry bunch we are, huh?" Kyung rested her head on the table, loosening her eyepatch and massaging the scarred flesh and rubbing around the milky eye beneath. "Sittin' here, being all depressed and stuff."

"Nothing else to do out here," Yasuhiro pointed out. "If you'd told me twenty years ago I'd be working on a fucking farm and actually kind of enjoying it, I'd have punched your lights out. Still, it's…alright. It's nice."

Hiro set down his tumbler harder than he'd meant to, sinking onto a well-worn stool behind the bar. "Wasn't that the point of moving out here? No trouble to get into?"

The door to the bar suddenly shook as a series of violent pounds hammered at its door; without even thinking, Hiro tossed Kyung the signed baseball bat hanging above the back counter, drew two knives - a Chinese cleaver for Yasuhiro and a long _sujihiki_ for himself - from the knife block next to him and vaulted over the bar, steeling himself.

"We close at midnight," Hiro shouted, "so I'm afraid you're an hour late. Come back tomorrow!"

The pounding stopped for a moment; the speaker, a man, was muffled by the door. "Is that you, Amamiya?"

The trio exchanged a nervous glance. "Yeah, it is. We're still not open," Hiro barked back.

"Amamiya Hiro?"

"I said it was. Now go away! We're closed!"

Silence, for a minute.

"Please open the door," the man said, his tone now more pleading than questioning.

"What part of 'we're closed' wasn't clear, huh?" Hiro shouted.

"It's Kurusu! Kurusu Takashi! Please, I'm begging you, please open the door!"

Yasuhiro blanched, raising his knife. "What the fuck," he whispered, "is that nutcase doing here? If he's packing - and you know that crazy fuck is - we've got no chance in hell."

"Should we run? My car's out back," Kyung added.

"What do you want? I haven't heard from you in - in a long time," Hiro said, gesturing at the other two to be quiet. "Weren't you in America?"

"I was, but I'm back now! I want - I just need to talk to you, boss!"

"Nobody calls me boss anymore," Hiro answered slowly. "I'm out of the family. Have been for ten years."

"I know! I know that! That's why I'm here! Please, for fuck's sake, just open the door!"

There was a long pause.

"I need your help, boss. Please. Please, Hiro, I'm begging you! Can we - can we just talk?"

Another pause.

"You packing?"

"Wh-what?"

"I said," Hiro said, frowning, "are you carrying right now?"

"Y-yeah. I am. 1911, unloaded, one mag only. That's it."

"Boss," Kyung hissed, "are you insane?"

"Swear on Yoko's name and answer me truthfully. Why are you here?"

This pause was longer; a whole minute passed with nothing but the soft tones of bubbly pop in the background.

"Yoko's dead," Takashi choked out at last. "Died in America. Please. Please just let me in. I need help."

"Boss, this is - we should go, right the fuck now," Yasuhiro said, shaking his head nervously.

"I'm not helping you do anything for the family," Hiro replied slowly, elbowing Yasuhiro.

"I don't want - that's not what I need help with. My - my son. It's my son. Please. Please!"

"Put your gun through the mail slot. Magazine first, then the gun, slide locked."

"O-okay, I'm - I'll do that. One second!"

A moment later, a small pistol magazine clattered as it was pushed through the front door's mail slot, followed by a compact 1911 with its slide locked back and the chamber empty.

Hiro strode forward, ignoring his friends' protests, and picked up the handgun; with a practiced ease which filled him with disgust, he loaded, press-checked and safetied the weapon, before walking back to Yasuhiro and handing the gun to him grip-first.

Yasuhiro swore under his breath, but took the weapon anyways; he flicked the safety off and trained it squarely at the door.

"I'm going to open the door. You stay in the doorway, hands up, and you don't come in until I say so, got it?"

"Got it!"

Hiro made his way back to the front door, careful to avoid stepping into Yasuhiro's line of fire, unlatched the locks and swung it open.

There, standing in the snow with his hands above his head, only a dim streetlight a half-block away illuminating him, stood the Masuhiro family's most prominent hitman - a living legend amongst Tokyo's underworld - clad in an oddly bulging yellow parka, thick winter pants, and a disheveled mop of black hair poking out from under his jacket's hood. His eyes were weary, his beard wild and his expression-

-broken.

Hiro recognized that look.

On his last day during his final stint in prison, he'd looked in the mirror, and those eyes had stared back.

"You look like shit, kiddo," Hiro said at last.

Takashi's eyes darted around, taking in the Bar Janus' interior, stopping briefly as he saw Kyung with her bat raised and Yasuhiro with his own gun aimed at his chest.

"C-can I come in, boss?"

Hiro sighed.

"Get in here. Sit down at the bar. Get comfortable. Yasuhiro?"

Yasuhiro glared at the hitman with an expression only slightly softer than before. "Yeah?"

"Keep the gun on him."

"Didn't have to say it."

Hiro shut the door, locked it, and returned to stand behind the bar.

"What's this about your son?"

Takashi unzipped his parka.

Tucked into a small carrier strapped to Takashi's body was a baby - less than a year old, by Hiro's estimation.

"What the fuck," Kyung and Yasuhiro said in unison.

Hiro sighed. "Start talking."


	2. PEACE (II)

Takashi gestured vaguely towards the rows of liquor next to Hiro.

Hiro, scowling, ducked below the bar, popped the hot-box by the till open and emerged with a can of warm milk tea instead. "If you think," he said, tossing the can over to Takashi, "that you can sit here after all these years, kid in tow - without Yoko, I might add - and hide behind getting drunk, you might as well just leave now."

"I don't even know where to start," Takashi managed, catching the can as Hiro tossed it over to him. "I...ah...okay. I'm done with this. I'm done. I want out."

" That's really great. I'm happy to hear that," Hiro answered, frowning. "That doesn't answer any of my questions. Start from the top."

Takashi took several deep breaths, pausing only to ruffle the hair of his child - who seemed content to remain asleep. "Okay. Okay. Souma came to me, around the same time when you three got out of the game, or close to it, right? It was around the time that Akio passed away, higher-ups were all jockeying for his spot as _wakagashira._ Offer was simple. Ten-ish years on the American side of things, doing what I normally did, and I'd become his personal enforcer. Even if he didn't end up taking over - even if he didn't end up being the _oyabun_ 's right hand, that was the kind of promotion I couldn't - wouldn't want to turn down. So I left for America with Yoko."

"I recall - vaguely - telling you to turn down the promotion," Hiro pointed out. "You told me, and correct me if this old man's memory isn't quite right, something about how I was a 'fucking coward' who couldn't 'handle his shit' or something."

"I was twenty, Hiro," Takashi muttered, eyes firmly locked with his can of tea. "I had everything. I had Yoko. I was, maybe not the top hitter for the family, but damn close. I was fucking invincible. You - I thought you guys," Takashi continued, gesturing at the trio around him, "couldn't handle moving up. Becoming...important. I was an idiot, I know-"

Kyung made a noise almost like laughter. "-you don't say-"

"-but when the shoe-in for the next _wakagashira_ offers you a job that'll solidify his claim to the position? What was I supposed to do? Even if I hadn't wanted it, it's not as if I was in a position to say no, was I?"

"Souma wasn't a shoe-in, dumbass," Yasuhiro spat. "He just happened to figure out that you were two things: great at killing people, and roughly half as smart as a bag of shit."

"I...I understand, now, that I...that was the wrong choice. Hell, I knew it then, deep down. Thought it was just nerves, you know, operating outside of Japan for an extended period of time." Takashi sighed, opened the can of tea and took several sips, careful not to jostle his child. "Spent those years based out of Hawaii, but to be honest most of the time I was in Los Angeles and San Francisco, doing my usual work. And then..."

Takashi trailed off, closing his eyes.

"I didn't say you could stop," Hiro said, crossing his arms.

Silence.

"It was, maybe, I don't know. It wasn't just any one thing. Got injured a couple times, badly. Finally realized how goddamn...small, I was, working overseas. Just one trigger-happy moron in a sea full of people a thousand times harder than I was. Yoko - she was, always was fine with family business, okay? I asked, one day, if she wanted me to stop, and she said it was up to me. And then we joked about settling down, having kids. And then it wasn't a joke. I knew I'd fucked up. I had to get out." Takashi slouched in his seat, eyes watery. "So we agreed, I'd breach the subject with Souma when we got back to Japan."

"Yet here you are," Hiro interjected, "with a kid on your lap and no Yoko."

"I figured out I wasn't invincible. Fine. That was fine," Takashi sputtered, "because Yoko was there and I didn't have any hits lined up for the last year, just debriefing and meetings and everything was okay. She was pregnant. That was fine. She had - we had a son. That was more than fine, it was - it was incredible - and - and then this fucking gas truck blows up on the highway, and suddenly she's dead!" He was crying, now, words coming through heaving breaths. "And - there wasn't anything to do, no - no - just karma or fate or whatever the fuck taking away the only good part of my life in an honest-to-god accident! It's just me, and my boy, and what the fuck was I, am I, supposed to do without - I can't kill someone to make Yoko come back. I can't kill someone to make me suddenly know how to raise a kid by myself or be a better parent than the people who raised me. I can't k-"

"Okay, okay, we get it," Yasuhiro snarled. "Your life fucking sucks and Yoko is gone. We've all lost people. Boss, Kyung and I, we know that better than anyone. Get to the point."

Takashi wept, openly, quiet sobs weaving in and out of the soft pop in the background for several minutes before he finally composed himself. He sat up straight, wiped his eyes and wrapped his arms around his son. 

For the first time since he'd sat down, Takashi looked Hiro in the eyes. "His name is Akira. Boss, I need you to take care of him-"

"How fucking dare you," Kyung spat. "You show up after ten years, without Yoko, I might add, and think you can just dump your fucking kid on the boss's lap as if it's his problem and not yours? Because, what, you've spent your entire life shooting and stabbing people and now you can't be fucked to figure out how to do something that doesn't directly benefit you?"

Takashi shook his head. "It's not that! I swear, it-"

"-man, screw you," Yasuhiro added. "God, you were always an asshole, but I never thought you'd stoop this low."

"Let me finish, alright? Please, just let me finish!"

"Let him talk," Hiro said flatly.

"Okay. Okay, so, I...I - Yoko was laid to rest in Hawaii, and I came back. I talked to Souma about...about a month ago, told him I didn't just want out, I _need_ out, because I can't raise my boy if I'm out doing hits every week, and - look, I know I'm a real piece of shit, but I'm wasn't going to just dump the kid somewhere and let someone else, especially someone in the business, raise him while I go on living like this." Takashi visibly composed himself, and nodded. "He - Souma agreed. One last job. I've got one last job, and then I'm out. No strings attached. No bad blood. A clean break."

"Of course," Hiro noted with a weary sigh, "your one last job is suicide in all but name, and you want me to take care of your kid - of Akira - when you inevitably get yourself killed trying to finish it." He took in Takashi's surprised expression, and let out a bitter chuckle. "Kid, even after ten years I am astounded at how fucking dumb you are. You really thought Souma was just going to let one of the family's best quit, on the spot, without some sort of punishment?"

"I didn't think-"

"-exactly," Hiro snapped. "You didn't think. You never think. Did you take Souma's offer?"

"I wasn't sure-"

"-answer the fucking question," Hiro growled. "Yes or no."

Takashi stared down at his sleeping son. "Yes."

"And it never occurred to you to ask, I don't know, me, or anyone else - literally anyone - to watch Akira for a year or so while you made a safer exit from the family? Instead of putting yourself in front of a firing squad?"

Takashi's face twisted into something like a smile. "It's like you said, boss. I don't think. And besides, who would I give Akira to? I - I never made any friends, Hiro, not here."

"You were overseas for ten years," Yasuhiro pointed out, "and you expect us to believe there wasn't one person either you or Yoko knew who would have helped out? If not for your sorry ass, for Akira's sake?"

"I wasn't sent to America to crunch numbers or negotiate deals," Takashi muttered. "And Yoko didn't...set down roots with other members of the family, let alone with the locals."

Painful minutes passed; Akira yawned, but remained asleep.

"The job," Hiro said at last. "How bad?"

"Twenty runs on a one-month timeframe," Takashi explained, his tone clinical. "Two with backup, the rest are solo. Targets are all from rival families - mostly lieutenants, but there's two _sateigashira_ in there, and one big-name corporate liaison to finish it off."

Kyung shook her head. "So you're screwed, is what you're saying."

"No. No, I'm not," Takashi answered, tone firm. "I can do it. I can absolutely do it. If there's one thing - there really is only one thing - I'm good at, and it's my job. Compared to America, too? Where even the poorest, most desperate crook can snag a Hi-Point for twenty-k yen, and anyone worth their salt has something full-auto? They'll never see me coming. I just need a month, Hiro, that's it. Someone to watch Akira for a month, and then I'll take him back. You won't see me again."

Hiro stared at the boy for a long moment. "And if you do get yourself killed?"

"I won't," Takashi whispered. "I can't."

"Indulge me," Hiro said, glaring at Takashi. "Use your head for once. Imagine. You're Mifune Toshiro himself. You kill everyone in your way, because you're the greatest badass Japan has ever known, and on your way back here a, what was it, a gas truck?"

Takashi flinched.

"Yeah, that sounds right, a gas truck blows up," Hiro continued, "and you die. What then? Or had you not considered that?"

Takashi whispered something.

"Speak up," Kyung said, prodding him with her baseball bat. 

Takashi stood up, slowly, unclipped Akira's carrier and set the boy down on the chair before falling to his knees and bowing his head. "I would humbly ask - not for my sake, because I know that means nothing - that you, for Yoko's sake, for Akira's future, that you watch over him. At least until he's old enough to understand - to know what a mistake his father was. To set him on the right path. To give him some guidance." 

"Boss," Yasuhiro began, "you can't seriously be co-"

"-shut up," Hiro ground out. "Everyone shut the fuck up. I'm going outside for a smoke."

Hiro threw on his jacket, took the packet of menthols with him, and left the bar through the front door.

Hiro lit a cigarette.

Hiro considered the facts, and only the facts.

Takashi was an idiot. Takashi had screwed up, royally, and thought at one point Hiro had felt something resembling sympathy for the boy (and he really was still that stupid, snot-nosed brat with too much to prove) the last dregs of that good will had long since vanished. 

Akira, on the other hand?

Hiro considered the facts, and only the facts, and especially did not take out the pendant underneath his shirt, because at a time like this - free, finally free from all the baggage and mess of his old life - he owed Takashi nothing. And if he owed Takashi nothing, he owed Akira nothing, either. A shitty situation, yes, but children like Akira - maybe not exactly like Akira, but in similar circumstances, certainly - made their way into foster care, probably, and were fine, mostly, sometimes.

Maybe - perhaps - if Yoko had been sitting in front of him, things might be different. But Yoko wasn't here, and neither was Min-Ji, and that wasn't important, because Min-Ji had nothing to do with Takashi's situation.

He took a drag from his cigarette - tried to, at least, because it had burnt down to its tip at some point without him noticing. 

Odd.

He tossed it aside, watched the butt fizzle out in the snow, and took another out, except it wasn't a cigarette, but a rusted bronze locket in his hands and Min-Ji was staring up at him from a fading photo with that slightly-unhinged, shit-eating smirk she'd always worn.

_I can't_ _. You know I can't. Even if I wanted to - and I don't! - what gives me the right to raise an honest-to-god child? I couldn't even keep your cactus alive, for fuck's sake. You know I can't do this. Don't make me do this._

It'd been hard enough, Hiro thought, to win staring contests with Min-Ji when she was alive.

_I never stood a chance, huh. You always did have me wrapped around your little finger._

With a long, weary sigh, he clicked the locket closed, tucked it back into his shirt and made sure to focus enough to actually light and finish a cigarette properly; for a moment, he considered lighting up another, before turning around and storming back inside.

"Get up," Hiro barked; Takashi, who was still on the ground, looked up at him.

"B-boss?" 

"You tell anyone you were coming here?"

"No. Been staying at an apartment hotel in Ueno, prepaid up until next February just to be safe," Takashi explained, cautious optimism creeping into his voice. "I told Souma I needed some time to get my supplies ready before I'm back on the clock - he said to check in with him next Friday," Takashi explained. "Family might be following me around, but it's not like I'm hiding from them. I'm not running. Not anymore."

"Gather up your stuff. Think about what you'd want Akira to have in case you don't make it," Hiro said, something twisting in his gut as joy and suffering tore across Takashi's face in equal measure. "Letters. Keepsakes. Clothes. Pictures. Whatever you think of, have it ready within the next few days, then call the bar. I'll tell you when you can show up again."

Takashi stood tall, even as tears began streaming down his face. "Thank you," he whispered, bowing deeply. "Thank you. I am in your debt, Hiro."

"I'm not doing this for you. I'm doing it for Yoko, and him," Hiro said, pointing at Akira's carrier. "If you really want to make it up to me, come back alive so I don't have to solve your problems for you. Yasuhiro, gun." 

Yasuhiro checked the safety on the gun before shoving it into Takashi's hands; he strapped Akira's carrier back on, put on his parka and tucked the pistol into the coat.

"I, uh, I'll be in touch shortly," Takashi said, bowing once again. "Thank you again."

Hiro frowned. "Get out of my bar."

**Author's Note:**

> Inspired by too many gangster movies from all around the world.
> 
> Please look forward to Ren Amamiya and his loving family of absolutely not terrifying ex-convicts.


End file.
